We Who Fall
by EhrynnWallace23
Summary: In Nazi Germany, hiding your identity as a criminal working for the less fortunate is hard enough. Too bad it gets harder when your father decides to house Commandant Erwin Smith and his elusive brother R. (Eren/Levi, Reincarnation AU) Rated Teen for action scenes, crippling introspection, and romance.
1. Chapter 1

I'm no longer a believer. Gods and devils seem like a far stretch, and the worlds behind my eyelids and between the covers of the books are just about as real as a perfect world—that is to say, not at all. Wisdom is faltering and hard to come by. Hatred can be rewritten, just like trust and comradeship. Every word hides a lie. Every person is a vessel of untapped betrayal. Love… God, I wish I could say I believe in love. I really do. And if there could ever be anything I could ever trust in my life, it would be love. But love makes us do stupid things. Love twists our perspective and makes a single person a deity. Love hurts, more often than not—and it won't stop hurting, not until the very end. Love is a beautiful thing. But I could never believe in it, no.

It's an odd thing, for someone as young as I am. I should be brimming with youthful radiance, ignoring the shadows in life and walking the wide and wild path that the spotlight leads me down. I should be feeling the happiness that comes with complete satisfaction—the wonderful realization that, "I'm growing up!", and the world is turned in my direction. I should be ecstatic at the petty problems that plague my life, no more harmful than a swarm of gnats; I should be overjoyed that my future is such a thick and beautiful mystery that lies before me. I should only know the patches of heaven deployed on this earth—a sort of advertisement, I'd say: "Isn't this nice? Do good and you can experience this all in heaven for all eternity!" or something irritating like that. I don't believe in heaven, either. Heaven is the role model of all happy endings, and I know those never to be true.

There's always a moment, though, when we're speeding forward in life, and suddenly we realize how terrible the world actually is. No matter where we go, we can't escape the shadows of reality. We see light and then notice the shadows; that's the way the world works.

I knew darkness from the beginning. It was engraved into me since the dawn of my conscious soul. By the time I was ten I'd witnessed death, touched death in the face a few times. Actually, I'd say that death and I were so well-acquainted that I was no longer surprised. Disturbed, yes. Angry, yes. Shocked, no.

When I met him, I'd halfway hoped that it would be the other way around for me: darkness, and then light. I was a little skeptical, but he was seeping in, like the rays of sun through the foliage in the trees, or the beams from a lighthouse to the shallow sea floor. I was entirely convinced that we wouldn't last.

But damn, I was in love with him. I was so, so invariably in love with him, and that was when I realized that my halfway hopes were completely right. That man set my life alight like an oil lamp—not really a fire, per say. Sure, he made my heart transcend the speed of sound and my dreams were aflame with his face. But he and I, we were like an oil lamp, or a candle, or the sun—whatever is the most constant kind of heat. We were warm and steady and spectacular.

Oh, I've got it. We and whatever awe-inspiring thing that we shared between us was the embodiment of all the stars before the universe's edge. And maybe, a little bit of what's beyond that as well. He was my world, my reality, the wall that cut off my terrible parts.

I'm not a believer, but I am a wisher, and a hoper, and a dreamer of faraway things. And I wish that it could have ended differently.

Do you hear that, universe? I wish it had ended differently!

But when it came down to the events that unfolded before me—my world, shattering in my hands; my sense of perception and emotion scrambled until I couldn't tell right from wrong; and him, infuriating, remarkable him, marching straight in and flipping it all upside-down, well…

I wouldn't have it any other way.

I probably should have ran through my gear to ensure that I had everything I needed, but by the time my mind wandered to that, I figured that it was too late to bother. The pistol was hidden under the hem of my shirt in my belt, my daggers were snug in their sheaths up my sleeves, and in my hand I crumpled a water-worn paper. There were a few smaller things that I usually brought along—an extra round of bullets, a pin, a map, and just in case, smelling salts, and I was fairly sure that they were in my pockets, but I'd accomplished in missions without those many times before, and I could certainly do it again.

I didn't appear to have any sense of purpose as I wandered down the cobblestone lane—I didn't have any purpose, not yet, anyway. The limits of missions were always nightfall, unless I received word of a more active military presence. It was a bit before noon, the sun was at high tide, and thankfully the town I was bound for was only a little down the road between the villages.

I found myself walking a familiar path—turn onto Rose Street, off of Main, and then three addresses to the left side—without really controlling my own feet. The hub of Maria was filled with the mingling scents of the butchery, the bakery, and at the edge of town, the beer-house. It wasn't a heavy town, but there were always kids around with a ball or two, tearing the relative silence with shouts and causing general chaos.

As a person who's traveled far (or, farther than most others, considering the circumstances), I like to believe that the beauty of Maria is taken for granted. What we have here cannot be easily found—it can only be easily lost. When I was young, very young, visitors used to frequent here. They never caused a grumble among the natives; the moment they arrived, they fell into a somber, awed quiet, overwhelmed, I suppose, by the majesty of it all. I might be the only person who lives here who can see into their perspective—sometimes, in the right light, or if you look suddenly after not thinking about it a while, it can look like the peaks of the Bavarian Alps that rise to the south are crushing you, or that the forest to the north is choking you. I'm always unsettled when I notice these things, and I think about something else immediately.

There were other things for me to be awed at, like how my mother went from maternal angel to warrior in a sliver of a second, or how light reflected off the stream, _my _stream, in the woods. We always have to keep on accepting, time and time again, that the things we are afraid of are the normal for others.

If there was any one thing I was scared by, it would be the worldly knowledge of the old man in the book shop, and the sweet yet conniving nature of his grandson. Armin's nose was almost constantly buried in a book, but his mind was always in the clouds, and his heart always reaching to the ends of the earth. It must have been why we connected so instantly. The difference between the two of us was that he carved new roads with his mind, and I paved new paths with my feet.

But there I was, anyhow, in front of the worn sign for Arlerts' Books, with enough books that Armin had lost count and enough shelves that I could get lost most times I was here. I entered, the broken cowbell clanging as I did so. It took a few moments for my eyes to adjust to the dim light, but once they did, I took off into the narrow lanes between the shelves, following the faint sounds of spines scraping wood.

Since the burnings had commenced, the amount of books read had nearly halved. I must have been twelve or so when the soldiers ransacked the place. Armin was terrified—for his grandfather, for himself, for his home—but when I offered to take his grandfather and him to Shiganshina, he refused. "It's bad to get caught for having suspicious books," he'd said to me. "But it's even worse to run away."

I remember those words, clear as the outline of the mountains on the horizon. I knew those words gave him courage, but if this is the right time frame, then those were the worst words he could have said to me. I had still not gotten over the Failure—I didn't get over the Failure until I was nearly fourteen, and even now I haven't forgotten it. It was the only time in my career that I doubted my morals, even though I knew it would always be a risk.

It's a terrible story, the Failure, I won't lie—it's the worst thing I've ever encountered, ever done, and probably always will be. But I don't want to talk about it. It hurts too much even now.

I found Armin in the corner of the scientific section. His eyes were trained at the fogged window with its thin white light, and he was absentmindedly stroking the spine of a book. I hardly wondered where his mind might be; I usually regretted asking.

"Armin," I said softly. He snapped to attention with wide eyes and a high-pitched grunt. I smiled. "Hey."

He shook his head slightly, as if he were shaking off rain. "Oh—hey, Eren," he replied. "I'm sorry; that must have looked awfully strange."

"You looked like you were plotting a way to end the war," I said. "As well as take over the world, throw mountains at your enemies, and worst of all, pick up a lot of women."

"I am not that… mind-oriented!" he half-snapped.

"All in all," I continued, as if he had never spoken, "a normal day for Armin."

He cuffed my shoulder. I didn't even wince, rather throwing him a wide grin. "You're terrible," he grumbled.

"I can counter that," I said. I threw an elbow onto his shoulder. "I'm spectacular, you see. I have a secret fairy who lives in the woods. I climb mountains every day—backwards. I'm the Robin Hood of Germany!" A dry laugh emitted from my throat. "Hardly terrible," I deadpanned.

"I know you're teasing yourself," he said. "I think it's stupid." He straightened up and shook his head again, but this time, particles of dust from the shelves was flung into the faint glow of the air. He paused and swiveled his head to me, scanning me head to toe. "By the way. The Robin Hood thing. You're a bit too neatly dressed for a casual day. Are you…?"

I met his gaze, and my face dropped into a serious nod. "Yeah," I said. "I got an anonymous note from Stohess. I'll probably bring the captives into Shiganshina for the night before sending them on their way to the border."

"Have you got everything?" he asked. "Gun? Knives? Map?"

"Won't need a map," I answered. "I know the region like the back of my hand. Besides," I scoffed. "What kind of time will I have for map-reading if I'm rescuing people?" He fed me an exasperated look, and I sighed. "I've got everything. All prepared, and I've got eight hours, as well. This is a standard job. I'll be fine."

I wasn't sure that I believed the words as I said them. It was the weakest excuse that humans can give, and it is almost always a lie. But I was confident enough, I believe, in who I am and what I do, to survive. It'd worked for me for years now. I'd succeeded almost every time in what I did. Only once had I failed. And I like to think of that day as an outlier, a blip in my system.

"You shouldn't say that," he said.

"Why?"

"Because when you do, I start believing that you'll never come back." The silence of the bookstore began to pervade us, but he chuckled. "What am I saying? Will you be able to meet again afterwards?"

"Ah…" I trailed off. "If I can get them settled by 7, Mikasa can probably take care of them, so if you want, we can do something tonight."

"Sure. What?"

I tapped my forehead. "Eh, ah! I've got something."

"What?" he repeated.

I turned to face him, lifting my lips in a mischievous smirk. "Let's go to the beer-house!" I said enthusiastically. "I haven't been there in God-knows-how-long!"

Armin raised an eyebrow. "Eren, we've never been there, so much as I can remember. If you've ever been there, it had to have been in another lifetime."

I blinked. "Oh." Sufficiently confused, I took a peek at the book Armin held in his hands. "_Wonders of the Outside World," _I read. "Outside? Outside what?"

"I don't know," he answered. "The text is pretty old—ancient, actually, but language is close to German."

The volume was bound with worn leather, more white than the original brown, and tattered at every corner. I could hardly make out the title—the gold once embellished there had faded into a faint yellow outline. There was an aura of wisdom around it, and in that moment, I added it to the list of things that awed me. "That could be a thousand years old."

He smiled. "It's been here all my life, and Grandpa says that it's been here all of his. For all we know, it could be."

I couldn't find anything suitable to say to that. "Huh. Maybe a madman wrote it."

He shrugged and leafed delicately through its pages. "Maybe. The things in here are poetic if not a little disjointed. They call the Arctic seas of ice, and they call volcanoes rivers of fire. Sort of like everyone had forgotten the names or something."

"Strange. Your kind of thing, but strange." I stared at the book for a halted instant before shaking off the quiet of the moment. It unsettled me for reasons I couldn't find. I lived in a world of ancient things—mountains and forests grown in the time before time, a village built centuries before my birth. But seeing it there gave me chills up my spine, and while I knew there was something inherently wrong, I couldn't place the feeling. "Anyway, let's go to the beer-house today, alright?"

"Why?" Armin asked.

I scanned the forefront of my mind for any reason. "Eh. Well, we're sixteen, so it's natural to be getting into that, and, err, to celebrate my success of today."

"You don't know it's going to be a success," he interjected.

I gave him a withering look. "No, I don't," I admitted. "But I have a very good feeling that it will be. Don't worry about me, Armin; I've got this one planned out."

Though there was still worry evident in his eyes, he rearranged his expression into that of mock horror and surprise. "Eren Yeager, planning things out? Impossible, a bit of a nightmare…" He paused. "And definitely worth celebration. Beer-house it is."

I cuffed him again on the shoulder. "There's the man," I said. "I'll run now. I've got another life to save."

I propped myself off of the bookshelf and started to turn, but when I reached the corner of the stretch, his voice interrupted me. "Eren." Surprised, I peered back. "Don't get caught, okay?" The concern in his voice was commendable, and I bit my lip before laughing without humor.

"I'm the Rogue Titan," I said, lowering my voice to a whisper so only he could hear me. "Not getting caught is part of the job description." I walked away before he could answer. I didn't want him to protest with logic and sentiment and shake my resolve and then maybe, just maybe, in the end, stop me from going.

That must have been the scariest part of who I was, and who I had to be. It would be a different matter if I were a hired hand. I would have no choice but to keep going. But I did what I did because I wanted to. I'd been doing it for years, and had no plans of stopping, but if one day I were to lose my motivation, no one would be able to stop me. It was terrifying, the concept that I had a choice in what I did.

However, I heard nothing from him, no responses, no scrape of books on the shelf, not even footsteps. I didn't look back, but in my mind's eye, he was standing there, staring at nothing. Maybe he was thinking about my words; maybe his mind had already returned to the matter of the Wonders of the Outside World; or maybe it was out in the world again, in the adventures he was born to have. I had no way of knowing what he did in that moment, but for a few minutes after, I would think about it, and I would realize: he must be so afraid.

We were all afraid, to some degree. It wasn't pervasive, and if people were in their right minds, they wouldn't show it. But the fear was always there, lying under the surfaces of our appearance, whether it be that an air raid would catch us, or that we're incarcerated for some nameless crime we hadn't even known we were committing. Fear must be the inevitable curse of war, for if I thought of every person I knew—not one of them wasn't afraid.

I never knew and I still don't know if there were others who did what I did. I suppose I was doomed to never know if that were true, because the greatest condition of doing what we did was that not a single person could know our identities. I bent the rules a little—I told Armin; I told his grandfather; I told my mother. I also told Mikasa, but that was redundant. Mikasa was already my secret. I never told my father; he was always too involved in other's affairs. He was the greatest father I could ever ask for, but although I halfway regretted it, I knew I couldn't trust him with this.

I'm glad I told the others, though. I credited myself with the bringing together of us all, the odd circle of mutual trust and friendship that transcended age and family. But ever since I came clean about my identity—my secret one, that was—we gleaned the sense between the five of us that there was no one else we could trust more in the world.

By the time I found my way back to the front of the shop, Armin's grandfather was sitting patiently at the register, as if he had never left. He was swirling the stale grains of coffee around his cracked mug. My mother leaned on the wall next to him—she was neatly enough arranged that I could tell that she had just come from her mid-day cleaning. She held a basket of laundry and a small loaf of bread in her left hand.

"Ah, Eren," she said with a smile. "Are you setting out?"

"Yeah." I fidgeted with the hem of my shirt. "Why? Is my gun showing?"

"You're fine," she assured me. "But I brought a bit of forest bread."

My mouth involuntarily watered. She'd long ago found a way to make bread from the plant grains found in the woods; I wasn't sure how she did it, or how it was possible in the first place, but it was a treat, and a good way of dodging the rations. "I'll be fine," I said. "I won't need anything to eat along the way."

She furrowed her brows. "It's not for you," she said. "You might need an excuse to go wherever you're going. If you're stopped, tell them you're bringing them a present. You know what to do from there."

"Oh," I said with a tinge of sadness, silently willing myself to become hungry again. I accepted the loaf and exhaled softly. "Well. I'll be off then."

Before I could exit the shop, I felt thin arms pulling me into an embrace. Mother rested her head on my arm. "Do good, okay? Do you hear me? Do this world a little good." She let me go and shoved me lightly. "Now run along, Eren."

I tossed the bread to my other hand and exited the store, the cow bells ringing like a requiem for the living. The town was immersed in a morning hush, but that could be me. The realization occasionally struck me that this world was incredibly vast, and that at the moment, I was alone in it. It came to me very quickly, and left just the same, and it was the feeling that you first get when you're in your early teens, and you're allowed to walk through town by yourself. It was the feeling of impending adulthood, but for me, it had been around for a long time in my life. I went through the woods and through the neighboring towns with hardly a care, only a destination in mind.

I reached Stohess without incident. Upon entering the village, I passed a group of soldiers with tankards of beer sitting on barrels and rolling dice. One of them caught my eye, but in his drunken gaze he merely waved me off with a leisurely smile. I forced myself to smile naturally back at them—if they were actually doing their jobs, after all, it would make my job much harder.

I unfolded the paper in my hand. 7 Krauser Street. I knew where it was, but I'd never gone there. It backed up to the forest, at the very edge of the town. Getting them out would be almost ridiculously easy.

Too easy.

Ducking into a shadowed alley, I fished out a rough cloak from my back pocket and draped it over my head. It looked a bit odd, but something inside me, some hidden, carnal instinct knew that something was amiss. I was young, but I wasn't a fool. There should have been more of a conflict. Someone should have stopped me, at least once, asking me what business I had. It happened on every mission, and this one, on this day, should not have been an exception.

I knew that the Rogue Titan was wanted by all the military residents in the region, and out of the region, even into France. Over the years I'd accumulated a reputation as ghost of sorts, snatching people out, killing few. I can count on my fingers the number of people I'd killed.

There were seven. Seven too many.

And likewise, I knew that people were searching for me. They knew nothing—they didn't know where I lived, who I was, who I was affiliated with. They knew nothing of me except my height, or my height when I was younger. One advantage of fighting when I grew was that I was a phantom, constantly altering myself in the way that aging went.

I knew that I was smart, but others were smart, as well. Others had made the war into a thing of horror and clockwork and science fiction: all those things that I never understood. And while I had made it through, survived, and kept on going, for nearly seven years, I knew that the day was coming, whether it be soon or far away, years from now, or perhaps even today—yes, the day was coming when I would slip up. I would be found. And everything I had worked to achieve would go to hell.

I wasn't one of the people to fear death. It was war. Death frequented this place; death was the bitter scent in the air that stilled us in fear. It was the cage that bound us from changing things, from ending this war, from rising up and creating peace. In fact, I think it was my indifference to death that allowed me to be who I was.

I never feared death, or oblivion, or pain, or being forgotten, because I know that one day, all of those will be true, and there's nothing I could do about that.

But it didn't mean I wasn't afraid. My greatest fear was that everything would reverse itself when I died. All the people I freed would be sucked back into the hopelessness that once drowned them; Mikasa would be thrown back into depression and slavery; Armin would be weak and bullied again; and everyone I knew would wonder why I was gone, and whispers would float around and twist the meaning of all who I was. When I thought about it, it truly was illogical, but I was young enough for the fantasies within me to still have room for truth.

And it didn't mean I wasn't afraid of being caught.

Right there, the terror started to flood into my limbs, charging my heart into a wild inferno of drumming, making me struggle to keep my sanity from falling away and burning. It was the panic of being walked to the execution block or the whipping post, of going to the trial you know you're going to lose. The panic of a caged animal being sent to the slaughter, and…

All at once, the fear manifested itself into anger, like a devastating chemical reaction. I was not a caged animal, nor a caged _anything. _I was free, wasn't I? That's what I fought for. Freedom. That's what I lived for.

I removed the pistol from my belt and switched the safety off, clutching the handle and placing my finger over the trigger with an eerie calm. There were fifteen bullets, and I wasn't going to waste a single one.

"Seven Krauser Street," I said under my breath. "It might be real, it might be a trap, but either way…" I paused. "Either way, the Rogue Titan is coming. So be prepared."


	2. Chapter 2

The first thing I heard upon turning into Krauser Street was the simultaneous cocking of multiple guns, all pointed in my direction. I peered up, and though the view beneath the loose threads of my hood were a little hazy, they did nothing to disguise the dark and hollow gun barrels that faced me. I almost laughed—almost. They were all military-grade machine guns. Every soldier there was dressed in sharp uniform and armed to the teeth.

Wasn't it an unfair game—ten men prepared for war versus a single boy with a knife and a pistol. If I had a say in this, I would have asked if they could cut them down a few numbers, maybe down to five. Five I could handle. But something told me that they and their superiors had no intention of letting me leave. Before a single word was spoken, I already had assessed the choices they were giving me: go with them willingly, to share my secrets and then inevitably be executed, or be killed on the spot. Bit grim a choice. Had I any intention to play along with them, I would have chosen the second option, because I sure as hell wasn't revealing anything about who I was.

However, I had a reoccurring knack for breaking the rules, whether they be others or mine. And I was confident that I would live to see the end of the day, live through the broad and fire-filled night, live through the blazing morning and the light of the next day. I wasn't about to claim I was going to live for a while; I wasn't even about to claim that I could guess how long I would live. I suppose that my death will be the roll of a dice, in the end, a slap in the face from fate and a stab in the heart from chance. But if I had to take a guess as to how I'd survived that long, I'd have to say that it had something to do with my sheer will to live.

Well, even if I lived a hundred years, a thousand years even—I would still die believing I never had enough time. There are so many things in this world for us to discover—so many ways our heart can be broken, so many ways we can find friendship and family and even love in the oddest of places, so many people who are so, so different than us, and so many corners of the world that remain undiscovered. I don't think anyone can die without having more things that they wanted to do, but they died anyway.

The difference between them and me is that while they had things they wanted to do, I had things I needed to do. I needed to save people. So many people, so many Jews and Muslims and gypsies and foreigners—so many people being killed every day. I needed to _save _them. And I needed to tell Armin and Mikasa and Mother and Father and Grandfather Arlert that I love them.

My life wasn't over when it had hardly begun, and I wasn't going to die today.

"Rogue Titan!" one of the men called, crouched on the cobblestone, with a hint of panic in his voice. "Step out peacefully and no one gets hurt!"

I counted my footsteps as I approached him, counted the splashes of water from the puddles in the cracks in the road. I wasn't going to use my voice unless necessary. They might identify it.

Near the door, three soldiers stood on hand, making a wall around a huddled family—a small woman, a tattered man, and four young girls. I tried not to look at their faces. I already knew that they were filled with fear.

"You will answer our questions. You will surrender completely. You will then accompany us to determine your trial. Do you understand?" the man demanded. His eyebrows were furrowed and his gun was shaking ever so slightly. He was afraid, the poor man. He was afraid that I was some sort of monster, and he was afraid that he would be next.

Tension hung in the air as I assessed the moment, darting my gaze from the soldiers to the quivering family and back again. I chose to look at the family instead. The terror in their eyes was evident, but there was another emotion in them that pervaded them: sadness, crushing, hopeless sadness. The feeling you had in nightmares when you knew that there was nothing you could do to escape your fate.

That was important, that emotion there. That was very important. And if the ends lined up in my head, I might be able to decode what was going on.

Sad. Hopeless. Trapped. _Hopeless. _Why? They were doing what the soldiers wanted, weren't they? They would probably be paid after I was caught for their help in capturing one of the most wanted criminals in the area. They were doing the SS a huge favor in this, and yet, they still stood there, shrunken with terror, like they were facing the firing squad…

Realization crashed into me. They hadn't just drawn me out; they'd killed two birds with one stone. Find the Rogue Titan, and capture a hidden Jewish family.

They weren't going to be paid—they were going to be killed.

With the sickening thought that had dawned on me, I threw every pretense of caution and planning out of the window. These were innocent lives. I couldn't let them die. That was all I needed to know.

"I understand," I said. Relief flooded their limbs. I don't know what they expected: that I would emerge with a cannon and two tanks? That I would somehow manage to kill them that quickly? These soldiers had very high expectations of me, apparently, and I wasn't sure whether that was good or bad.

"Then you will answer our que-"

I cut him off before he could even finish his sentence. "I understand," I said. "But it doesn't mean that I'm going to comply." Stepping back, I drew my pistol, pointing it at the sky.

It must have looked so pathetic there, a polished little affair compared to the rifles that awaited me. I wish I could have paused my existence, so no one could know how afraid I was inside.

My heart was beating like I had just climbed one of the mountains to its summit. It beat at the speed of the wind when I stood on its precipice, the rock shooting before me into ever-rolling forest, the air thin and cool and the sun glistening on the stone around me. My heart was beating like the terrifying, dazzling moment of being atop the world.

The words rushed out. "If I shot one of you, you would inevitably shoot me, right? Over. Done. You'll have accomplished almost everything you wanted to, but you'll have a death of a soldier on your hands and you won't know anything about me or my group. You'll have a hell of a lot more targets to find, to investigate from a new start, because I can say that we all have our own ways. While I die, the win is still mine if you haven't actually done anything. So while I applaud you for the trap and all, you've unwillingly dealt the card in my favor."

"Card," the leader piped up. His eyes narrowed. "Do you think this is all a game?"

I forced a laugh. "Games," I said. "Great things, those are. Now let me ask you—aren't all of our lives games in the end? We roll the dice, we deal the cards, we make our gambles. We lose, we cheat, we take a swig of our drinks, and we win." I brought my pistol down to tap its barrel thoughtfully. "I have the power to end this all right now, so your move. If I answer your questions, you're going to have to answer mine first. Do _you _understand me?"

He glared at me. I glared back, raising my eyebrows in challenge.

"I understand," he relented. "You get three questions. Then you die."

"Thanks for the warning," I said.

"Ask."

I realized that I had no questions; there was nothing I wanted to know. Their military standings were useless to me. I didn't need to know their plans; I didn't need to know the names of their superiors. If I asked the questions they expected me to ask, I would never escape. It was animalistic—the basic, instinctive standoff we all could summon if we thought enough.

But they weren't mere animals, and that's where I had the advantage. Three questions. Three questions to throw them off guard, and I had only minutes, only seconds to figure them out.

They wouldn't react much about their families. Talking about their wives or their children would come across as a threat. It would make them hostile, want to kill me even more. Asking about the war and the ethics of it would throw them into a rant of following orders.

I saw the family—I saw the children, shivering, as though it were February and not August. They were so scared, the children. They were standing on the brink of oblivion, the very edge of the pit of human sanity. I had three questions to save their lives, and mine. It was pathetic that I even needed to go this far.

That's where the questions entered my mind with a swift slap.

I pointed to the youngest girl. "Tell me something: what's the name of that girl right there?" The leader craned his neck as he followed my finger.

He scrunched his nose. "I…" He trailed off. Something sparked in his eyes, and he looked up at me with a stunned and disturbed expression. "I don't know."

I nodded at him. "That's question one. Let's see…" I took a step back, and the clatter of guns followed me. I spread my hands so every soldier was included. Inside my mind, there was a clashing battle of empty silence and the repeating mantra of _please let this work, please let this work, please let this work. _It was deafening. It was insane. "All of you…have any of you, any single one, ever known the names of any of the people you've captured?"

In the same way of their squad leader, the blind rage slowly drained from their faces. Suddenly, I saw them all as they were: a boy lost in the twisted glories of war, a man who missed his family, a young man stunned and confused and scrambled in the maze of the mess he'd gotten himself into.

A gun lowered, and all eyes were turned to the left. The man had a straight nose and ruddy, angular cheeks. Without seemingly his own realizing, a tear had escaped his eye. He darted his sight across all of us. "No," he answered. "No. Not ever…not even once…"

"Private!" the squad leader barked.

"It's only the truth," the man said. "And I'll bet it's true for everyone else." From the corner of my eye I could see the rest of the soldiers falter.

They nodded.

"You will stop now, Private!"

The confusion intensified in his face, but he wasn't confused at the orders; they were perfectly ordinary. I could see it in his face, the soft, bitter resignation to who he had to be, but all the questions behind his eyes. He was bewildered at himself. "Yes, sir."

"That was the second question," I said. I drew my lips back into a snarl by habit, even if they couldn't see it. "So if that's true, if you all mindlessly send people to their deaths without even knowing their name, then you are nothing more an nothing less than rabid, dumb, _disgusting _goddamn dogs." There was so much anger, wasn't there. So much anger in those words. I wondered where it came from. I wondered why those words pierced me as much as they pierced them.

The squad leader's eyes widened, but I continued. "That," I said. "Was _not _a question."

His face contorted with rage. "Who are you?" he shouted. "Who are you, and who do you think you are?"

"My questions first," I interjected. "Yours, later. I'm going to ask my third question now."

"What is it?" he hissed.

I lilted my voice into a charming tone. "Will you let me through to see the family?"

The soldiers surrounding them shifted uncomfortable, but the squad leader nodded at them, never taking his eyes off me. "Let him through," he said. "But don't let him try anything fishy."

I breezed through the soldiers, only knocking them once or twice for kicks, and ascended the short and narrow staircase to where the family stood in front of the door. I knelt down and held my hand out to the children. "Now what are your names, girls?"

The oldest, no more than eleven, answered for them. "I'm Gretel, and that's Dorotha and Anne and Sina."

"Those are beautiful names," I said. "And you are all beautiful little girls. I wish I could pull off my hood so I look less scary, but those soldiers out their think I'm too ugly to go anywhere without them. Isn't that mean?"

The three younger girls giggled, but Gretel looked at me with untapped appreciation. I grimaced under my hood for her. I so easily forgot that by the time I was her age, I was already saving people. She was innocent, but not enough to escape the horrific reality of her probable future. Too young to save herself, but too old to be blissfully ignorant. So much like how I used to be.

I patted their hands, then straightened up and moved over to the father. The eyes of the soldiers bore into my back. Leaning forward, I placed my lips next to his ear and lowered my voice to a reverent whisper. He quaked.

"In just a second, I want you to act like you just learned something very shocking, say, my identity, and you need to stumble back in horror and hit the door, putting your hands behind your back while you do so. I am going to start speaking very loudly, and during that time, turn the door handle and hold it that way, and when I say the words Rogue Titan for the final time and snap, fall back into the door. You got it? Don't nod, just do as I ask."

His eyes and mouth widened in sync, and he shook his torso in horror. His legs appeared to fail beneath him, and he tottered backwards until he slammed against the door.

I turned to the soldier. "That," I said. "Was my third question. So now, ask away."

The squad leader rose and started walking toward me, and I descended to the middle of the staircase, so he looked angrily up at me. "Who are you?" he asked. "Who are you, Rogue Titan? Tell me or I shoot."

I cleared my throat. "Who am I? I'm the Rogue Titan."

"I know-"

"Shut up. I'm answering your question. I'm the Rogue Titan. I'm the lion in the lion's den who fights for the lambs. I'm the self-built wall for the tired to rest on. I'm the question you hide in your mind of whether what you do is right, and I'm the ghost you try not to see that tells you it's not. I'm every bit of doubt and certainty, and I'm salvation. I'm the words you will never forget. I'm the regret that haunts you. I," I finished, raising my voice. "_Am the Rogue Titan." _I lowered my voice and cleared my throat again. "Does that answer your question?"

I snapped my fingers at my side. The father pushed. I took out my pistol. "Run!" I shouted.

The children dashed into the house as fast as I could have hoped for, and the parents followed suit. The guns were brought up in my direction. "I have fifteen bullets and I'm an awfully good shot," I growled. "Don't cross me. I don't hesitate."

I don't know what I was expecting. "Fire!" the squad leader shouted.

Realization crossed my face, and I stumbled into the house and slammed the door shut just as I heard the violent cracks of the machine gun. For a second, I lay flat on my back with terror as bullets whizzed over my head. I felt one tear off some of my sleeve. Around me, everything was shattering—the furniture was splintering, paintings were falling, and glass was singing as it broke into thousands upon thousands of pieces. I could only hope that the family was able to move to the side in time.

The moment the first wave of bullets was past, I grabbed the nearest chair and wedged it under the handle, locking it with shaky fingers as I did so. I sprinted to the kitchen in the back of the house, where I found the family pressed against the wall. All safe. I breathed a shuddering sigh of relief.

"Are you all okay?" I asked in a rushed tone. "No injuries? Nothing?"

"No," the mother responded.

"Alright." I kept a shuddering hand on the handle of my pistol, as a reminder that lives were in my hands. I could kill thirteen men. I could kill a family by failing. I could potentially kill myself if I made a false move. It was a terrible thing that sometimes the rift between life and death was the single twitch of an index finger. I inhaled. I exhaled. I squeezed my eyes shut and opened them again, like it could clear my head in any way, but that was impossible. I was irreversibly trapped in the wild thrill of battle, the constant rush of adrenaline that had my muscles tense and my brain tenser. "We have less than two minutes before the SS break in. Where's your back window?"

A shivering finger pointed into the next room. My eyes followed the path, and I grabbed a chair from the kitchen table. They nervously followed me.

The family room was as small as a rich man's closet, with dust on every surface, in every corner, and shadows scattered throughout the room. They had an open trunk of collectibles and a small shelf of books. It dawned upon me that if an entire Jewish family could hide for all these years, this probably wasn't their house. So whose was it?

But I wasn't focusing on that; it wasn't the time to be getting involved in these things. Raising the chair, I ran forward, seeing only the mottled paneless window, and brought it down.

Then, my world exploded in a hailstorm of broken glass.

I felt something sharp slice my cheek open, and then my other cheek. All I saw and all I heard was the metallic zing of the shards rocketing past me, the tinkling of the pieces breaking apart in repetitive measure, and the pulsing waves of destruction before my eyes. My hands let go of the chair without my noticing, and for what must have been less than a second, I was suspended in space and time, in potential death, and

_It was flying over the skin of my eyes like a sleeve, a spinning tape, winding and winding and winding like a clock, but not really—like all of my memories I've ever had in a single second. Like my life was flashing before my eyes, but this was the wrong life._

_There was a forest. Trees as dark as clouds in midnight and as tall as the depth of the universe, so it seemed. I could hardly see the sky, but the sky seemed relative now, for some reason. The sky was my racetrack as much as the earth, and I knew, I knew why; it was ingrained within me, but for some reason I couldn't bring the reason to the forefront of my mind._

_There was blood. Red like the petals of the roses that used to line the garden down past my house—wait, that never happened, we didn't grow roses in that little town in Germany—as red as anything I'd ever seen before, curling and twisting through the air. A droplet caught my cheek. I didn't even question it anymore._

_There was a red-blond haired girl who fell against a tree. She was beautiful, elegant, dangerous. Gone. A man with a dark brown buzzcut. Gone. A man with a short blond ponytail. Gone. A man with a raggedy undercut and an age-forwarding face. Gone. I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry. Well, not really, because I wasn't a child anymore, but I wanted to find some form of reality to help me._

_I wanted to kill them all. Kill who? I wasn't a killer. At least, I wasn't anymore._

_No, I wanted to kill them all, but even more, I wanted to save them. Save them all. Save them all. Save, save, save, save._

"Save," I mumbled. And then the moment was over as quickly as it had began. The glass fell to the floor with a droplet of my blood. The family came in.

"They've started breaking through," the father said.

"We have to hurry." One by one, I grabbed the little girls and placed them on the ground. They stumbled, but caught themselves quickly enough. I turned to their parents. "C'mon, go!" They jolted at the words, but hurriedly rushed forward and hurdled out.

Taking one last look at Seven Krauser Street, I scrambled out. "What are you waiting for?" I urged to them. "Run, then, run!"

The forest loomed before us. The undergrowth was thankfully sparse, but it was growing thicker. It was damp and mossy, but I knew the way. I scooped up the youngest girl; it weighed me down, but I was still at the pace of the others. They were unhealthily light, anyhow. If I could only get them to the first mark zone before the soldiers caught up, then everything would go fine. But we had to be quiet and we had to be fast.

The girl let out a sob and buried her head in my shoulder. I caught my breath enough to whisper to her, "What's your name again?"

She whispered back, "Dorotha."

"Can I call you Dory?"

"Yeah."

"Well, Dory, are you scared?"

"Yeah. Really. I'm really, really scared, Mr. Titan."

"Don't be," I assured her. "Wanna know why?"

"Yeah."

"Because I'm going to save you and your sisters and your Mommy and Daddy. I'm going to make sure you all make it out without any boo-boos, and I'm going to guide you to a place where you'll be safe and where you can have lots of yummy food." I kept my voice level with the hushed voice of the forest.

"Really?"

"Yes. Because that's who I am, and that's what I do. And want me to tell you a secret?"

She snuggled tighter. "Yeah. Secrets are cool."

I smiled over panted breath. "My name," I said. "Is Eren. And I'm a little boy who acts like a grown-up."

"If you're a little boy," she mused, "why do you act like you're a grown-up?"

I paused for a moment. My quick and shallow breaths cut through the woods. We were almost there.

The truth was, I didn't know. I didn't know why I had been such an adult since I was young. I didn't know why I risked my life daily to save the Jews. I didn't know why I had such an aversion to the way things were, or why I always felt drawn to the places I felt drawn. It was like I had been born the way I was. I had a few years of childhood bliss, and I acted no different than the children around me. But I'd always had some sense within me that my soul was older than most. Maybe it was salvaged. Or maybe it was some sort of quirk of life that made me inwardly different than the rest.

"There are some people who never grow up," I said. "They look old but they're still young inside. I'm the opposite of that. I'm young but I'm already all grown up inside."

Dorotha shrugged. She had dimples in her olive cheeks, and her hair was cropped messily and short in a dark brown bob. I wondered if she'd gotten it cut by one of her sisters. I wondered where her mother was at the time.

"That's okay," she said. "It's okay to have any of those if you have souls."

I almost laughed at first, but she said it so seriously. She was so human. She was even more human than me, even though I was the most human person I've always known. I'd always assumed that to be human was to make mistakes, to make them over and over despite my best efforts; to be human was to fail and to feel pain and to cause pain, and to be broken and put together so many times that your pieces are scrambled beyond repair. But to be human is also to love, and the dream, and to remember and to think and feel. To be human is to have a soul, and little boys and little girls were the embodiment of all these things innocent and beautiful. It was an abomination that she was thought to be anything but.

Ahead of me I saw the bent U tree next to the straight-split tree. We were here. I set Dorotha to the ground just as the parents with two of their children and the eleven-year-old came to the tree. The parents were flushed and beading with sweat, and the girl was shivering with exhaustion. I heard rough, distant shouts in the distance, and I knew they were getting closer.

I dug my fingers into the soil, and I found a latch. A trapdoor swung open, with muddy steps swinging into an empty makeshift cellar.

"Get in," I commanded. Without a second thought they all stumbled in. I went in after them, and I carefully sealed the lock behind me. Again, above the surface, it looked like part of the forest floor.

In the faint light I could see Dorotha embracing the rest of her family, pointing to me. They turned their heads, and I put an urgent finger to my lips. The footsteps were getting closer with every passing second. They were pounding hard on the soil, but that might have been my heart.

The footsteps were right over us now, and we all held our breath and had our eyes squeezed shut like a single peek into the darkness would give us seven away.

"They're gone, sir," one of the men said, his boots rustling. "It's like they vanished off the face of the earth."

"I doubt that's the case," the squad leader said with a dark tone. "Continue the search. They can't have gotten far."

"Sir, it's impossible that he would attempt something as radical as he just has if he didn't have a backup plan. It's incredibly likely that he met up with a partner or a group somewhere in the forest."

"What does that imply, Private?"

"Forgive my saying so, sir, but the Rogue Titan is evidently a skilled strategist and athlete. Perhaps those he associates with are the same, and they were able to make a quick escape somehow."

"Are you suggesting we give up the search? Because that is not your decision."

"Is it really worth the risk for a single family?"

"I could have you punished for insubordination, Private. Get back to work."

They left an hour later. I waited until their footsteps were completely gone before peeking my head out of the trapdoor. The forest was completely safe and completely abandoned.

I looked down to the escaped family, whose faces stared up at me with a nervous tightness. I laughed. "It's safe," I said. "They're gone. It's safe. I'm safe. You're safe. We can come out now."

I pushed open the trap door quickly and fell on my knees while they were still groggily getting up from the cellar wall. For a moment there, I felt a sliver of belief in something, anything, up there. This was impossible. This should have been impossible. It was one against thirteen, a cursed pattern in the game of life—so impossible that succeeded could be nothing less than a divine miracle.

And no one died. What a beautiful concept, that no one died, faced with such improbable odds.

But I was the king of improbable things. To change the game with a single word, a single action, and not much of a plan beforehand—it was my forte.

I clicked the safety on on my pistol.

It took a few minutes for them to get out. There were tears streaming down the girls' faces, and there were still shivers running through their limbs. It's an odd occurrence, sometimes, that the entirety of your fear doesn't strike you until the fullness of the danger was past.

I couldn't let my guard down, though. As long as I was fugitive, every person I ever rescued and every person I'd ever known was in danger. And while I told myself that this family was safe, that would be a lie until they reached England.

The mother spoke softly. "N-now what?"

I stretched my shoulder. "Follow me until we reach headquarters. Then we'll talk."

And so, we set off.

On the crest of one of the hills, the second-oldest girl spoke up. "Why is it so rocky here?" She pawed her shoes against a slippery stone she struggled to steeple.

"I don't know," I answered honestly. "This area in particular is unusually rocky. Mi—my friend and I have always thought that it's not natural, but the remains of an old civilization, literally fallen."

"So we're walking on an old city's graveyard?" she said excitedly.

"I never thought of it that way," I said. "But if you stretch your imagination, I guess we are."

We walked for an hour or so, over rolling hills and trickling streams. I knew the path by heart, between the first mark point and Shiganshina. I'd been the one to create both of them, after all, the result of three months and hot days and mysteriously disappearing shovels from the broom closet. We'd set the place with logs and stones. For a temporary hiding spot, it was sturdy.

I started identifying the trees as we grew nearer, and the grass, and everything else. There was so much that they weren't seeing, and that was the way it should be. This forest was my home. I had marbled skies and damp leaves and streams in my blood. And if that were true, Shiganshina was my heart.

I heard the rush of the waterfall before I saw it, and then, we were there.

A young woman stepped out into my frame of vision. Hair the color of wet ink, pale but rugged skin, a slim but muscular figure. She was dressed in my trousers and shirt, and her hair was pulled back into a bun. Her silver eyes glinted with familiarity.

"Hello. This one took rather long, don't you think?"


End file.
